Dark Data, information lost in a black hole

The power and value of data is the key to success for companies of our times. To manage and understand them to take fast and effective decisions that impact on business benefits is a need that has been placed at the contact centers’ databases.

But information has a hidden face, Dark Data: all those information assets collected and stored by companies. It’s all data not used for operations related to the business activity, or for statistical purposes. In a society where the data volume continues growing, these surpluses without a certain purpose are logical.

Dark Data can be dusted off and turn into a source of business. According to IDC, up to 90% of macrodata is Dark Data, a high percent if we think about the potential use.

“Dark” Data Centers

Data management used to collect information is one of the basics of excellence at customer care centers. Information is essential to offer a great omnichannel experience. It is also necessary to ensure a good agent performance. Classic KPI data allows knowing about the call extension, the number of solved incidences or sales conversion statistics are critical, but they also ignore others that could be critical.

Which data are we talking about? Information that is not processed but allows knowing why an agent calls more than other or why sales results are so unequal with similar times invested.

We need to determine a paradigm shift in the business intelligence of contact centers in order to analyze Dark Data. Those data management patterns are needed to obtain relevant information for our industry. Dark Data needs a new model to throw light to business.

If we use call stats as a reference, we can see Dark Data can be so enlightening. According to current parameters, the moment of the day when more call flow is the afternoon. This way, we get a “cality” ratio that tells us how many successful calls are made. In the other hand, Dark Data can show the specific hours when calls obtain solid 1 scores. Supposing that time band is from 10am to 11am, we are doing a less productive effort during the afternoon because we don’t have those data about success ratio.

So… Where is the challenge? The main point is to know if all that information is valuable. We have a complex challenge we need to approach, because it can be a leak of opportunities that companies are missing without even knowing. Contact Centers have to use affordable and quick analysis data systems to easily see the value of that information and de able to decide what to do with it. Simply destroying those data could mean throwing money away. However, long and expensive classification exercises are inefficient.

Success at Dark Data management can be found by establishing which information is useful and which not. Contact Center sector needs to find new ways of pulling data that allow them to reach better opportunities. Recognizing the existence of Dark Data is the first step to take advantage of it.